I'm looking for a good place to start in cryptography and places to go to get free books etc on the topic.

I have been looking online but I always get stuck at some point or another. I need something that covers the basics better or a good explanation on how to understand the expressions/notation. It seems far from regular algebra.

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I've closed this as being a list-of question, which we generally don't allow here. That said, I've mentioned this to other moderators in chat, as we persistently get these questions (our first was one) and we've debated allowing them before, so this could be re-opened (and you can still see the answers given anyway).
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GoneJun 24 '12 at 18:19